A small-town mayor forced a strip club to pay him $6,000 a month for 15 years or he would shut it down, police allege.
Arnie's Idle Hour in Harvey, Illinois, population 18,000 near Chicago, made the payments starting in 2003 so it could provide illegal prostitution services.
Mayor Eric Kellogg allegedly made the ultimatum soon after he came into office and had his brother Rommell and cousin Corey Johnson collect the cash.
The extortion began as $3,000 but was doubled a few yeas later after the mayor allegedly sent police to shut down the club when owners baulked at the new sum.
'Tell your boss to just pay the man,' a policeman said on the third time he came to shut down the club for refusing the doubled payment.
Rommell Kellogg was found guilty of five courts of extortion on Monday and faces up to 25 years in federal prison.
Johnson, who collected the money from the strip club, pleaded guilty to a theft charge in a plea deal with prosecutors.
Eric Kellogg, former mayor of Harvey, Illinois, accused of extorting a strip club after he found out it was providing illegal prostitution
Eric Kellogg left office in 2019 and has not been charged with a crime, despite being named in court documents as the alleged ringleader of the scheme.
The extortion racket was uncovered when the FBI raided the Arnie's in 2017 after investigating it for providing illegal prostitution in a private area of the club.
Agents offered the club manager immunity if he cooperated by wearing a wire and continued to make the payments under FBI direction.
Payments were referred to as 'pizza money' or 'rent money', as when the club owner texted the manger: 'Horrible week. Rent tomorro. This guy killing me'.
During the investigation, the club made payments totaling $37,000 between December 8, 2017, and May 3, 2018, with money provided by the FBI.
Agents recorded hours of conversations between the manager and Johnson and sometimes Kellogg, and tapped the phones of both suspects.
Johnson became frustrated with his role as the bagman and discussed with the club manager, who was wearing a wire, that he wanted out.
'I'm gonna come up with something though because I'm sick of these motherf**kers, man,' he said.
'I never wanted to be in it from the beginning.'
The manager asked when Kellogg was out of office so the arrangement would finally end and was told it would be 2019.
Arnie's Idle Hour in Harvey, Illinois , population 18,000 near Chicago , made the payments starting in 2003 so it could provide illegal prostitution services
However, Kellogg, who supervised Johnson's collection of the extortion money, refused to let him out of the scheme because they didn't trust anyone else.
'Corey told me he wanted to get out of delivering pizzas,' he told the club manager.
'He can't get out of nothing because that's the way it goes. That's convenient for me, convenient for you.'
Kellogg also complained to the manager that the dancers were not discrete enough in offering prostitution, as one had walked up to him and offered $75 for a hand job 'but I'll give you everything for $225.'
'Girl didn't know me me from nowhere, you know what I mean? And I tell her "this is not the way you approach",' he said.
He said they should just offer private dancers and then the men would likely ask for sex themselves.
Kellogg was barred at his trial from speculating as to why his brother, the mayor, wasn't charged, or from claiming he was the 'real target' of the investigation.
Mayor Kellogg's other brother, former Harvey police supervisor Derrick Muhammad, was jailed for nine months in November 2020 for covering up a felon's ownership of an uzi sub-machine gun.
Arnie's was owned by Alicia Arnold and her husband until his death halfway through the extortion, and afterwards by her and their son.
Arnold was in 2021 charged with tax fraud for allegedly filing false tax returns in 2012 to 2017 that heavily understated the club's income.
The club was also notorious for a 2019 shooting inside and in the car park that killed the son of a local police officer and wounded three others.
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